How Can We Encourage More Women To Work In IT?

From my experience the best workplace is one that offers diversity and equality, however this can be in short supply within the IT industry. Often it is simply seen as a by product of the “tech” world however it doesn’t need to be that way. With encouragement I believe that more women could be attracted to a career in IT and recently I had the great experience to be involved in such an event run in Victoria called “Go Girl, Go for IT”.

It was a two-day educational event designed to encourage secondary school girls in years 8-11 to consider IT as a career option with a range of organisations showcasing career options including NAB, Coles, google, Telstra and salesforce.com to name a few. Over the course of the event school children came from up to 5 hours away to learn more about options in IT and the impact was quite amazing.

• Only 38% of students considered IT an option before the event, now 95% are at least a little bit interested in IT after the event
• 72% of students would consider a career in IT after attending the event
• 99% of teachers rated the quality and content of presentations as above average
• 96% of students found it helpful to hear each presenter talk about their personal experiences in IT

Some of those numbers are quite remarkable and if it only influences 1 student to look further into Technology it will be a success. Events like this should be run in every state so I would encourage more companies and people to get involved. Those of us lucky enough to work in a diverse environment need to drive this into more organisations. The technology sector offers a diverse range of career opportunities so if we all work to promote this a more balanced environment will result and that is good for everyone

What does your work environment look like and how could you make it more female friendly? It’s worth thinking about.